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The portrayal of women in media sucks. Let’s be straight, the vast majority of all protagonists are male, the women who make it into stories are often ineffectual or demeaned and sex still sells above all else. Now, anime is no different, and in some ways it’s worse than the 3D butts in Transformers: Dark of the Moon and the protective love men are supposed to have for Lara Croft. Yet, somehow, anime and manga have also turned out some fantastic gems that deal with gender roles in society that outclasses most American media.

My goal is to analyze four different anime, each of them showcasing a different perception of women in Japanese society. They are as follows: Mawaru Penguindrum (Spinning Penguindrum); Lupin III: The Woman Called Mine Fujiko; Ooku: The Inner Chambers; and High School of the Dead.

Now before anyone cries that I’m cherry picking certain series and skipping some others, I totally am. To be honest, I have a rather limited range when it comes to older anime. I do, however, know these series very well. For your consideration, I am skipping Miyazaki, who has fantastic female protagonists, but his movies don’t quite comment on women so much as he does a very good job at writing them.

Furthermore, I am well aware that High School of the Dead is a fetishistic mess of tits and guns. Its failure to portray women as anything except sex objects works as a great contrast to the others. In fact, I find portrayal of uncompromising masculine dominance to be as important to the discussion of women in media as the well-developed female characters featured in the other series.